Discombobulated
by Kaiser Bluesummers
Summary: Mitsui discovers some disturbing secrets about himself that run quite contrary to his professed morals. Written by Kaiser Washington and The Long Fall of Prose. Ongoing.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **The Long Fall of Prose and I are collaborating on this fic.

-Kaiser Washington

* * *

**Chapter 1**

He gouges glee, his classmates observed; with time ever standing still he protruded like a thought against the earshot of his teacher as the latter spoke about immaturities, and, ironically, of time – "Punctuality is obviously not in your dictionary," the imposing man starts, "… you've never failed to arrive late. I'd be the happiest man on earth if you told me you finished the assignment I gave last week."

Mitsui shakes his head.

The other grins, seemingly malevolent as he rejoins, "I thought as much. That leaves me no choice but to punish you. Tell me, good 'ole Mitsui, what kind of reinforcement would you prefer?"

The blue-haired, however, only got past his grin; he stares unblinkingly, trying to reveal hindsight with his eyesight fixed to the front row. _He's smiling_, he jumbles his thoughts, _he's been infected like dung_.

He grimaces next, and impetuously runs out of the classroom, slamming the door behind him. All but embarrassment is lost within the classroom, almost to the point of amusement for the seniors. The running Mitsui nevertheless finds the noise harrowing, sick in the head.

"The defining moment in human evolution," he smugly hisses.

"What?"

"Them," he points out. Laughter overhangs the canteen; his classmate cannot tell if he is talking about the History class assignment they were given a week ago, or if he is just horsing around like he usually does, always incriminating to the point of hilarity, and, ironically, of ignorance.

"Who are you talking about?"

He bites his sandwich. "No one," he smiles.

A sophomore walks past them, graciously walking. "Dry to dust," he jeers.

His classmate rejoins, "Why do you hate them so much? You're probably just scared of them." He taunts him.

"Scared? Why should I be?" the shooting guard replies haughtily.

This was more or less the cadence he followed everyday. He will bark, his friend will notice, and the swagger that he will mouth soon concludes to entreat that their heads be left kicked in. He has nothing to lose, he remembers, he hasn't encountered them anyway, not that he intends to do so – the discomfiture he would inevitably incur would doubtless be too much for him to bear.

"What do they look like? I mean, what do they do?" he would ask Kogure.

"What do you mean 'what do they look like'? They look exactly like you of course!" the brown-haired would often reply to tease, which proved to be quite a match against his friend's howl.

_Why is it that he never bites anyway?_ the vice-captain would ask himself.

"What're you thinking about?" Mitsui interrupts, who is sitting across from him. The morning sun entirely withered its freshness away as the orb clears the thick white clouds and burned ceaselessly on the plains of the Shohoku High School. Everyone has started to come out from their classrooms and Mitsui can notice the pace at which these people come and ago, and while it doesn't have any relevance to his train of thoughts right now, he has nothing in his mind's eye.

"Mitsui, did you finish the History report that Sensei assigned us last week?" Kogure asks. "He teaches your class as well, so I'm sure he must have given you the same assignment."

Mitsui grins sheepishly. "Well, he did assign it to us," he says, "but I haven't done it. Heck, before you reminded me—"

"You weren't even aware," Kogure finishes with a sigh. "It's the same old story, isn't it? What excuse are you going to make? You can't use that my-dog-ate-my-homework excuse, since it's so clichéd that not even an infant would buy it. Plus, you don't have a dog."

"But he doesn't know that," Mitsui points out. "And how could you even think I'd use something as boring as that as an excuse? You've probably never forgotten to turn in an assignment, so you wouldn't know how to lie your way out of a situation like this."

Kogure smiles lopsidedly. "Well, that's true."

"And anyway," Mitsui goes on, "you're talking to the master of lies. What makes you think I couldn't come up with something that's both believable and cool?"

"You're right," Kogure says. "Knowing you, you'll probably have a thousand excuses on the tip of your tongue by the time it's History class for you."

"Not yet," Mitsui says. "But I'll definitely come up with one. Don't worry."

"When is your class anyway?" the other asks, looking at his watch.

"Right after the lunch break."

"Oh," Kogure says. He pats Mitsui on the shoulder. "Good luck then," he says, earning a nod from Mitsui. "I think I'll be going now. Akagi said he needed to discuss some things with me before class started. See you at practice." Kogure says, walking away in the direction of his classroom.

Mitsui swivels. He spots two boys at the corner of his eye, probably juniors… _It's not their break yet_, he muses; it's probably his teammates cutting classes.

He walks to join the escapade.

"Hey, guys—" A bead of sweat rolls down his face. They pierce him with their stare, apparently strangers to him.

"You know…" he stammers, noticing their hands. He pauses with a sigh, trying to look for the right words to use. "You know, you really shouldn't… hold hands like that."

"Why not?"

"People might think… people might, they might think that you were, uh…"

"How benign. What if we are?" the other finishes, completing his thoughts; Mitsui was afraid he'd say that, who then started dumbly at them.

He walks away with a jarred compulsion towards silence.

He now looks straight into the mirror of the washroom; his drenched face tore itself asunder in his reflection as his eyes begin to redden. He sweats profusely, unbeknownst to him, and the collars of his shirt started to dampen, too. What divine intervention must it be to punish him with such dishonor? He then wipes sweat off his brow with the back of his hand; it was growing harrowing.

The fact that he had a mounting arousal down his crotch wasn't helping him one bit.

tbc.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The dull thud of his limp body was an elating sound to Mitsui as it fell onto the asphalt, consciousness and grace lost. He cast one last smug glance at his handiwork before getting to his feet, and made a noncommittal, almost perfunctory attempt at freeing his clothes of the blood and dirt they had become stained with. He gave up on this and proceeded to examine his own cuts and bruises (largely attributable to his tripping and falling down). Such scum, he corroborated with such painstaking accuracy, couldn't lay a punch on a pudding if it tried with all its might. Nor does it deserve to be allowed to live—the opinion Mitsui was fortified with when he decided to take on the degenerate fag in the first place.

He stared; the seemingly mangled body lay immobile in a pool of blood.

He was admittedly a little confused. He had been expecting the spectators to support him more enthusiastically than they had done, and feeling slightly harrowed by this thought, regarded the people who had gathered in a circle around the scene of the fight appraisingly. He recognized some of the faces as being from Shohoku; from the basketball club, he spotted Yasuda, who gave vent to a small yelp and hid in the shadow of a taller man as Mitsui's eyes met his. The majority were people who were just passing by. All of them bore the same look of ill-concealed shock and horror on their faces—yes, Mitsui was quite confused.

He paraded the opinion that _these_ people who were so unabashed as to even feel and mention love–or think of it for that matter–needed to be rounded up and beheaded forthwith ever since he had stumbled upon this silly concept as a naïve kid. Of course, he knew that this was the consensus.

The looks on the faces of those around him reflected otherwise. He had expected to hear cheers from everyone and receive a pat on the back from his close friends, maybe a proud look from his parents if they'd been there. He received no such adulation.

In the course of his reflections, he became aware of an awkward silence, and the fact that the shocked, dumb look in people's eyes had turned into piercing glares. From this he inferred that the spectators weren't pleased with his art, and moving along this line of thought reached the ominous conclusion that they were all like them, too, enraged by the violence perpetrated against a member of their accursed brethren. It was his turn to don a look of horror.

Swallowing slightly as he passed his eyes over the gathered crowd once more, he noticed that there wasn't a single woman among them, a fact which supported his earlier presumption. One usually expects an angry mob to be comprised of angry couples, united in their denunciation of whatever injustice they were protesting. The situation he was faced with presently was most disconcerting. Noticing that the onlookers weren't about to jump at him and beat him up—at least just then—Mitsui grabbed the opportunity and decided wisely that he should really get going. He took a step forward, whereupon the portion of the crowd in front of him thinned out a little.

With increased confidence, Mitsui took another step, and then another, until the power of easy movement returned to his legs. As he passed by the people and noticed that what he had initially construed to be looks of deepest loathing were actually those of fear, he regained every bit of his lost self-assertiveness. He snorted derisively at a boy his age who looked close to tears, and recognizing him as the sinful lover of the one he had just beaten the living daylights out of, broke into a grin of the most malevolent satisfaction.

"It'll be you next," he said to add to his mounting sense of euphoria, not failing to notice the tears cascading down the boy's cheeks, and laughing aloud at the sight of them.

He turned to resume his journey home, and hardly did he catch a glimpse of a familiar pair of round glasses than a resounding slap shook him to the very core of his being.

"Kogure!" he cried in surprise as he stumbled backward into a pair of hands, which he soon recognized as belonging to the one he had just threatened, and shook its owner off with a cry of disgust. He raised his fist to punch him.

"Get off me, you—!"

He was cut short as Kogure jumped onto his back and caught hold of his arm with surprising strength for someone with his apparent lack of build, knocking the wind out of him and nearly making him fall.

"What—are—you—doing?" said Mitsui through gritted teeth, struggling to throw Kogure off him.

"You've had enough fun for today," replied the Shohoku Vice-Captain. His tone was so cold that the hairs on the back of Mitsui's neck stood on their ends.

"I… What're you doing here?" Mitsui stammered as Kogure finally relinquished his hold on him.

"I could ask you the same question," Kogure replied, his eyes narrowed to slits behind their round spectacles, something which only accentuated the cold fury in them instead of concealing it. "You said you were going home to study."

"Well, I was, but—"

"Save your breath, Mitsui. I saw what happened here with my own eyes."

"You don't get it," Mitsui said. "I only did this because—"

"I thought you'd changed!" Kogure was yelling now. "You'd promised Anzai-sensei you wouldn't get into another fight again! And I thought our team actually had a chance this year…!" His eyes were glistening with unshed tears, and somehow, Mitsui found that the sight of them knocked the wind out of his system and rendered him miserably speechless.

"Kogure, I'm sorry—" he managed in a croaky voice after some time.

"Good night, Mitsui," Kogure said. "If there's anyone you should be apologizing to, it's those two classmates of yours. As for me, I don't want to have anything to do with you anymore. Good night," he said again, strengthening his grip on the books he was carrying, which already bore the marks of his fingernails on them, and stomped away at a brisk pace, not turning to look back even once.

A pronounced feeling of guilt began to set over Mitsui as he weighed the finality in Kogure's words against the supposed gravity of his deed, leading himself inexorably to the question of the righteousness of his actions. Forcing himself to look in the direction of the remaining half of the couple, and noting his state of hysterical devastation and helplessness, a part of him—actually—regretted, a little, having come this way at all when he could have very well chosen to take the short way home and keep up his promise to Anzai-sensai.

His promise! Then he realized for the first time the extent of the disaster he had wrought upon himself. He might never be allowed to play basketball again.

He balled his hands into fists so tight that his fingernails dug into his palms and drew blood. But Mitsui was oblivious of the pain, which was infinitesimal compared to the doom he was inevitably heading to: seeing his life's dream being crushed all over again.

Ambulance sirens became audible in the distance, becoming increasingly louder as they approached the spot where someone had doubtless told them a fight had taken place and a person had gotten badly injured.

Mitsui ran. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, as if this were a way for him to escape his fate and undo all he had done this evening. He ran until he reached the quiet darkness of an alleyway, where he was confident he would be safe from anyone wishing to take revenge on him. At the same time he could clear his head of all the swirling thoughts that were tormenting him like poison, screaming for him to turn his attention to them. But their screams sounded distant to him, and he couldn't make out what they were saying.

Had he done something wrong by righting what's obviously wrong?

Remembering the expression on the faces of the onlookers, he guessed that they indeed condemned his actions. Even Kogure seemed to think he had done something gravely wrong. Kogure was Mitsui's best friend, and he just lost him. Was any amount of hate to _them_ worth ruining their friendship? Mitsui thought not; but then he remembered with a jolt his first encounter with the couple from a few days before: the two boys walking down the school corridor, hand in hand, with an infuriating brazenness and an evident lack of cognizance, or rather regard, to how nauseating a sight they presented. They were so arrogant in their defiance of Nature's most venerable laws that they dared suggest that there was nothing wrong with _them_.

Anger began bubbling up inside his system like magma from a fissure. He saw red despite the utter darkness, and lost himself within the black void of ironically blind hatred. No, Mitsui did not regret what he had done. If there was anything he regretted, it was being benignant enough to spare the creature's life. He was in a half mind to go back and finish the deed, but realized bitterly that the ambulance must have whisked him away to the safety of the Kanagawa General by then.

He trudged back to his house, still simmering with anger.

He lay tossing and turning in his bed for hours that night, unable to go to sleep, unable to rid his head of the faces of those two boys, the revolting thought that a limp-wristed man had actually touched him with his accursed hands, had the gall to use them to save him from falling down, and worst of all, the undeniable fact that he had felt indescribably aroused at the touch. Even as he remembered all these he was aware of a feeling of restlessness, a hungry, burning desire that emanated primarily from the region of his crotch, and inebriated by his present thoughts, he rose from his bed and dressed, his body seemingly acting on its own, and his mind numb.

He didn't know how he did it or how long it took, but by the time Sense returned to her throne, Mitsui was staring up at the familiar blue sign–Kanagawa General–the very hospital in which he had seen his dreams being shattered the first time. His hatred for the place was drowned by a feeling of urgency, a conviction that all his answers were behind those glass doors, and he began taking determined, forceful steps toward the entrance of the hospital.

He mechanically walked up to the help desk and impatiently told the woman sitting there, "An injured teenager was brought here a few hours ago. I'd like to see him now."

"Could you tell me his name, please?" said the woman, resting her hands on the keyboard of the computer.

"Uiko Omi," said Mitsui, and was surprised at the ease with which the words came out. He'd probably only heard the name in the passing, and even when he was beating him up and cursing him, he never made use of his name, or even thought of it.

"Right," said the woman. "Someone by that name was indeed brought here today. After being treated in the Emergency Room, he was taken to Room 106." She pulled out a register from a drawer. "May I know your relationship with the patient?"

The word startled Mitsui, and it was a moment before he comprehended what was meant by it.

"Oh," he said. "I'm a… a friend."

She placed the register before him. "Now I would need to you to write down your name and contact number over here, and sign over here."

Mitsui did as she said mechanically, and like a specter without a conscience, he drifted absently toward the elevator, impulsively following the directions that the woman had given him, feeling vaguely uncomfortable as he saw how many sick and injured people there were at the hospital, being moved around in wheeled beds to places they were probably not conscious of visiting. Omi had probably been one of them, Mitsui thought absently as the elevator doors opened, accompanied by the ring of a bell.

The next thing Mitsui knew, he was staring at a brass doorplate. He turned the doorknob slowly, feeling apprehensive about what he might see, and stepped inside. The sight that met him caused a strange, warm feeling to develop at the pit of his gut and a region slightly lower.

Behind the lucent window pane of the hospital dreamily slept the bandaged guy himself, flamboyant probably in the gazer's eyes, un-stiff, black-haired, breathing as if his gasps surrounded him, isolating him from the rest the world. So flamboyant was he to him he looked like a part of the disinfecting hospital itself, and only if he would slightly breathe out would he appear to be alive, his frame sprawled by the bed.

This youngster's unluckiness, thought the vengeful gazer, was his own doing. People like him speak of oeuvres that are their preferences; nothing is moral anymore, he deemed as he now walked towards him, locking the door. It no longer suffices that they go unnoticed, and more than ever people like him have managed to infect the world with dung so treacherous that their downright discontent to their own bodies abounded with such malice that even this blue-eyed onlooker, who seemed to have locked the room's door, felt as if he wanted to prove this boy wrong.

Mitsui stared at him, as if his soul and the very foundations of his beliefs were being sucked into a void; he became lightheaded. He had already made a mistake encountering him and his cohort days ago, and a second one when he himself thought of them dreamily, as if his soul and the very foundations of his beliefs washed away while he was too… too weak to resist, too malevolent to contest. He took out the rope. Under a moonlit room Uiko snored lightly as his limbs moved slowly against the sheets, unaware of his misfortune.

The senior, with delicateness, had practiced this in his head countless times. Dunk his face with ether. Shake out the life of him. Whisk himself past this pest's face. Make him sleep, make him sleep. No resistance; he will add further bruises to his already injured body. He will snap his fingers until his silent screams finally free him from the torture of down his crotch, as if swelling from some disease until the boy could no longer scream, until he could hardly breathe. He will do his obligation, par excellence.

Tomorrow he would scramble at the school as if nothing happened. All that, were well and good; he dared not think of his name, and he preferred it that way. The bed creaked. The sheets unfolded. His limbs were already secured by the bed posts by the time this black-haired gullibility became aware of his surroundings. He breathed out, heavily, but the ether-soaked cloth already deprived him of any more will to even watch this mounting blue-eyed monster before him. He closed his eyes, hoping against hope.

To Mitsui, everything here was a perfect, misshapen immorality. He knew that the only way to rid himself of this confusion was to go back to its source and finally release him from it. He smelled like sweat. The bandaged black-haired opened his eyes, ever so slowly. The handkerchief is being released, which he thought for the better.

"Stay quiet or I'll beat you to death."

Surely it wasn't uttered as a favor, but a directive. Nor was it uttered, but was fizzed in an awkward, delirious manner. He replied with protesting eyes. A feeling of foreboding luck swept through his lithe frame as the senior crept onto him, sitting on his chest. His knees hurt the boy's shoulders. He could already anticipate so much after he was almost beaten to death earlier, so he knew precisely why it had all come to this. Mitsui has wretched him to pieces: he trashed his sleeved clothes.

He bustled. This creature of a rare race was about to be taught his lesson. He will deprive him of any more chance of encountering him again by the end of this moral feat as he unbuckled his belt, as he unbuttoned his trousers. Vermin! Scoundrel! Only he could clean this world of such immodesty because he himself brimmed with such malice.

tbc.


End file.
